On the new google ID and Sony W55

As I posted previously, I did switch my google account. It is now about half finished. I am using GTalk with "harith.s". I now have most of the contacts of my classmates - thanks to the yearbook. You might have not noticed this but I came up with this interesting idea to invite harith.s to contribute to this blog which is owned by lukas.harithski - LOL. Now I can write here without logging into another account. Most importantly using Flock. I am still using two browsers most of the time. I need to organize my feeds, export and import them into harith.s. Once that is done, only Orkut and GMail will be left. I don't use Orkut much, so that's not a problem. I decided to leave all the mails in lukas.harithski except for some personal ones :D I'll filter the orkut invitations and scraps and forward them to harith.s. I'll be done.

I borrowed a camera ( Sony W55 ) from one of my relatives for the batch trip. This time, I have made sure most of the trip will be cherished for a long time unlike last time when we didn't have a camera and there weren't many pictures of me or my close friends at IIIT. I have started experimenting with the camera at home and there is a lot to learn. Photography is fascinating. Here is a nice one by GBR who is obsessed with macro photography. We shot some photos evening on the terrace. Yes! you heard it right. The terrace. It's open. I uploaded them on flickr.

coming up next ... Posts on the shots.

New Website is up.

I finally filled in some content and finalized the graphics. So, this is the site. I found very good images at Web Design Guru They seem nice. I used the RSS Icon available there in the "MyLO" page. Currently the whole design is in flash, but I would very much like to port it to html. Since the webpage doesn't have any flashy animations, arranging the images properly is the only challenge that I face. I don't want to go home tomorrow :( I have other work ( PECN and Theatre report ) to do. But, this would be my only chance to go home. If I miss this, I'll probably not go back until we return from the batch trip.

Vision 2020

10-15 years from now, where do you think I will be ? I don't mean the specific location, but, what would I be doing ? What would my friends be doing ? It's an interesting thing to think of. Where you want to be will is certainly different from where you would possibly be. To make the possible , probable ... ok ok no more philosophy :D ( unlike naveen ) Anyway, this is how I would like to see my wingmen and me by 2020 :)

• Me : Would have joined ISRO and living on the Shriharikota island :D

• Naveen : Would have finished Ph.D, would be working as an assistant professor in some European university ( OXFORD ? I would very much like it ;) ) . Why an assistant Prof. ? Well, I think 10 years is too short to become a Professor. Especially in a foreign university

• GBR : A stock market pundit ( competing with siva kumar ) + a great s/w engg. Even would be taking his suggestions right away.

• Pramod P : Would have founded a company. M$ and Google would be in a bidding war ( $50bn ? :P ) for his company.

• Sai Ram : You would have two shades here. One guy, a pro s/w engg. living happily with the love of his life ( You need to go azharuddin's for this to happen :P ) But at night ,he would be that person who is on the top 10 most wanted H4CK3R5 list of NTAC , CIA, MI6, etc.

No wonder it triggered a smile on your faces, LOL. First part of what I wrote for each person is realistic. The second might be a little exaggerated, but hey ... anything is possible or put it the adidas' way - Impossible is nothing ;)

Heavy Dinner expenses + diet experiments with my body

What have I had for dinner in the past two days ? Here's the list.

• Feb 24th, Sunday:
  
• Curd rice ( 25/- )
  
• Bread Omelette ( 15/- )
  
• Cold cofee ( 10/- )
• Total expenditure: Rs. 50/-

• Feb 25th, Monday:
• Sweet corn masala ( 20/- )
• Pani Puri ( 5/- )
• Snickers chocolate ( 30/- )
• A banana ( 1/- )
• Sprouted Green Gram ( 2.5/- )
• Total expenditure: Rs. 60 ( approx. ) + Rs. 25 ( Inevitably cut because I did not cancel dinner )

135/- of wasted money. I could have happily ordered a Veg. Biryani ( you know I am a vegetarian, don't you ? ) from Anupama :(

Inspired by naveen, I too to see how my body responds if I stop drinking Coffee and Tea. So, I just ( as of 2349 hrs IST, feb 25th 2008 ) had my last cup of tea for atleast a week days. If possible, more. Everybody is getting health conscious these days. Sarika is planning to work out at gym. Naveen won't eat bananas for obvious reasons. Pramod wants to eat bananas for the same obvious reasons :P God knows how sairam is taking care of his health. Anyway, I'll try to convince him to come to swimming 'and' or 'or' jogging next month :D May lady luck smile at me.

My Google account

I didn't know the use of a very good email id in my first year. Precisely the first gmail account that was created for me. harith.s . See, how simple it is :D. I can stay like this and appreciate the simplicity of this ID for an hour :P. Lesson learnt? Definitely. Listen to what seniors say. I'm glad I did not delete this one like I deleted a "few" others. Really a "few". I deleted a google account to see if my orkut account would be deleted. Got bored of orkut and deleted another one. I also remember deleting an account because I didn't like blogger. All these were before the end of my second year.

Anyway, I'm glad to have not deleted this one. I though this could come in handy sometime in the future. Now, the intricacies in switching to this account ? Many.

1. Orkut: I recently started orkuting and I already deleted a couple of my old accounts. So, it would be irritating for people to add me again and again and again. They might think I am crazy.
   
2. GTalk: Though I don't have many friends in gtalk, I still have this orkut problem again.
   
3. G Reader: Oh! the feeds I have subscribed to while browsing? This is not a problem , because I can just export and import the OPML file.
4. GMail: Never a problem because GMail has POP/Mail forwarding. And you can use "send mail as" feature.
   
5. Docs, Calendar, etc: There is always sharing. Ah! I love web 2.0 Do you know when it was released ? :P ( Naveen told me that he heard someone asking that question. Funny thing is, the other person replied "I think it's planned for a release in the next year" :)) )
6. Google: Forgot the most important thing ? My google web history! I don't think there is a feature in google search that allows me to export all that google has learnt from my searches and import this information into another account. I have this habit of referring to java api if I have a doubt. So, when I first started learning java, I always clicked the java docs api pages. Now, google knows that I want those pages. So, it's just giving me those in the beginning. If I google for "String", I have this java docs api page java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/String.html as my first result. Below that, I have the usual wiki links:

String (computer science) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In computer programming and formal language theory (and other branches of mathematics), a string is an ordered sequence of symbols. These symbols are chosen ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_(computer_science) - 47k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

String theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interaction in the subatomic world: world lines of point-like particles in the Standard Model or a world sheet swept up by closed strings in string theory ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory - 142k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this More results from en.wikipedia.org »

My wingmates very well know why I have that string theory there ;) See the results , even google knows that I am more of a computer science student than a physics student :D So, what do you get if you google "String" ?

Why do I want to switch anyway ? Obvious. I can't tell someone my gmail ID without getting embarrassed , can I ? Since this is the only problem, I can use the cookie swap firefox extension to quickly switch google accounts. And there is a google account multi-login grease monkey script that sucks badly. Since I want my GTalk to tell me when I have a new mail in my Inbox, a simple mail forwarding should do. But, all the tags ? Aah! the nightmare. What ever I do, I need to make a quick decision and get contact IDs of many ug2k4 people.